Humphrey Searle

Symphony No. 2 Op.33 (1956/58)

Symphony No. 3 Op. 36 (1959/60)

Symphony No. 5 Op. 43 (1964)

BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra

Conductor Alun Francis

CPO 999 376-2
(Rec. 1995)

Two powerful musical encounters in the mid 30s, while Humphrey Searle was
a classics undergraduate at New College, Oxford, were to become seminal
influences in the composer's subsequent career: the British premiere of Alban
Berg's 'Wozzeck' given by Sir Adrian Boult and the BBC Orchestra,
and the music of Franz Liszt. Little was understood in Britain at this time
of recent European musical developments in general and of the Second Viennese
School in particular, and the young Searle was fortunate in making the
acquaintance of the musicologist and former pupil of Berg and Schoenberg,
Theodor Adorno, who had arrived in Oxford as a refugee from Germany shortly
after the 'Wozzeck' performance. Adorno introduced Searle to Schoenberg's
twelve-note method of composition and was later instrumental in securing
lessons for Searle with Anton Webern in 1937 The music of Liszt, although
generally better known, was almost as misunderstood and mistrusted as that
of Schoenberg and his disciples in pre-war Britain. While still a student,
Searle began championing Liszt's work: he would later write the influential
book 'The Music of Liszt', the first such study in the English language,
and promote wider recognition and publication of many of the later works,
long since out of print.

Such a heady combination of stimuli at an impressionable and formative stage
marked Searle out for a compositional trajectory radically different to fhose
of nearly all his peers. That he pursued his own path so rigorously,
single-mindedly and heedless of passing fashions, surely accounts for the
fact that Searle himself has been at times misunderstood, neglected or both.
However, his position as a leading modernist in the history of British twentieth
century music is undisputed, and his canon of works, of which the five symphonies
form the core, is impressive in its expressive ease and formal mastery. From
today's more liberal post-modern perspective, Searle's music should no longer
present a problem of polemics, but simply be enjoyed for its beauty, drama,
compassion and consumate artistry.

As will have been gathered, Humphrey Searle's musical education was hardly
conventional. Apart from his five months with Webern and two short periods
of study either side at the Royal College of Music in London (with John Ireland
and Gordon Jacob) he was self-taught. His leaning towards German neo-romanticism
- partly perhaps a result of German blood inherited from his paternal
grandfather- was apparent in his earliest student works which eschewed the
English pastoral style of Vaughan Williams and his followers. By 1939 he
had embraced the twelve-note method with a set of Piano Variations and a
String Quartet which paid homage of Schoenberg, Berg and Webern in turn.
It was however from Schoenberg and Berg, rather than from his more cerebral
but greatly respected master, that his mature style would develop - Lisztian
rhetoric and lyricism counterbalancing the intellectually rigourous demands
of the serial language. In this respect he differs from the only other British
twelve-note composer of this time, Elizabeth Lutyens, whose austere, fragmentary
style more emulates Webern. Searle would always unashamedly declaim himself
a Romantic, a view that might have baffled the more conservative factions
of audiences at early performances of the First Symphony (1953), a work of
shattering power and violence which firmly established Searle's reputation
as an enfant terrible of British music.

In the late 40s and early 50s Searle composed a trilogy of large scale pieces
for speaker and orchestra: 'Gold Coast Customs', 'The Riverrun' and
'The Shadow of Cain'. These works display a sure mastery of the
twelve-note technique and of maturity of style. Structural unity, here, is
provided by the text; the purely orchestral form of the symphony poses problems
of which Searle was aware: 'the classical symphony'
he has written, 'depends to a great extent on
contrasts of key which cannot be realised easily in twelve-note music'.
In the First Symphony he responded to this challenge with a tight
control of essentially classical formal procedures. In the Second Symphony
(1956-58) however, he chose a note row with strong tonal implications giving
the work a gravitational pull towards the key centre of D. Indeed, the sonata
form first movement is articulated along the most classical of tonal polarities,
tonic and dominant, while the third movement finale sets off in the dominant
and, in the coda, resolves to the tonic.

The symphony begins with a slow and majestic introduction in which the row
is stated in its original form: the first note, D, is reiterated throughout
by the horns with the remaining eleven notes unfolding on lower strings and
bassoons. This gives way to an allegro molto exposition of the principle
material of the first movement: a vigorous first subject featuring driving
motor rhythms in the woodwind and syncopation in the upper strings, followed
by a more relaxed second subject for solo clarinet. Before the development
section gets under way, the music of the introduction returns, now transposed
to the dominant and with the row in its inverted form. A more extended version
of this same material occurs again (on the tonic D) before the recapitulation,
in which first and second subjects reappear condensed and in subdued vein.
After a distant echo of the introduction, the movement rushes headlong to
its conclusion with the first subject material back in its original character.

In the second movement, marked Lento, a lyrical and expressive melody
in the violins weaves a sinuous line above ominous repeated chords in the
brass. A climax in reached with a fortissimo statement, by the full orchestra
in unison, of the first seven notes of the row in inversion. The climax subsides
to reveal a hauntingly luminous central section in which celesta and high
string tremolondi accompany birdsong-like melodic figuration an solo wind
instruments, reminiscent of Bartokian night music. The violin melody of the
first section returns and rises to a second climax; in a short coda, fragments
of the 'night music' are heard distantly on the woodwind. The finale follows
without a break and immediately resumes development of material from the
first movement. It is constructed in two large musical paragraphs, each one
ending with a series of dramatic crescendi on pedal points and under-pinned
by a repeated rhythmic motive on two side drums and tenor drum. The last
of these gives way to a restatement of the symphony's introduction which
heralds an extended slow coda, taking up the violin melody of the second
movement. This time the music insserene, the menacing brass chords have
disappeared and the orchestra soars to a final ecstatic climax, before the
introduction music brings the work to a forceful close, resolutely affirming
the symphony's principal tonal centre. The Second Symphony is dedicated to
the memory of the composer's first wife who died of cancer on Christmas Day
shortly after the work had been completed in sketch form; the opening page
bears the simple inscription 'for Lesley 25.12.57'. The first performance
was given in October the following year by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic
under John Pritchard, and the success of this occasion inspired Searle to
begin planning another symphony almost at once.

In the Third Symphony Searle departs from classical forms adopting
a freer approach. The three movement work in programmatic in the manner of
the Lisztian symphonic poem in as much an the music is never slave to the
'programme' or pictorial representation but is suggested by extra musical
criteria, in this case Italy and Greece. Although tonal centres play an important
structural role, they are not an overtly stated as in the Second, and the
musical landscape is altogether darker, more turbulent and psychologically
intense.

The original Venetian first movement was scrapped after a visit made by the
composer to Mycenae in December '59 which, according to Searle
'even in broad daylight still seemed to smell of the
blood of the Atrides'. Suddenly the Ancient Greek, somewhat reluctantly
studied at Oxford, came to life, and the, by turns, brooding and violent
music of this movement in Searle's response. It consists of a slow introduction,
at the outset of which the row in stated in its original form, a dramatic,
war-like allegro of scurrying semiquavers and brass fanfares, and slow final
section, extending and developing material from the introduction and ending
in the manner of a funeral march. Before the final climax we hear; quoting
an annotation in the score made by the composer, an 'echo
of the battle in the distance' - a striking and original use of extremes
of register: high stuttering woodwind and violins over pianissimo timpani
and double bass ostinati. Searle describes the central movement (originally
titled 'Festa e Bora') as 'a tarantella, interrupted
by the stormy wind which whistles down from the Alps on to Trieste'.
This compositional tour de force is as colourful and exhuberant as anything
in Searle's output and develops and combines three main ideas: the tarantella
rhythm, which opens the movement and is never far from the surface throughout,
a raucous parody of a religious procession (a march for blaring brass and
bass drum) and swirling scalic figurations on woodwind and strings depicting
the wind. About two thirds into the movement, tam-tam strokes and clashed
cymbals mark the eye of the storm; but the momentum never lets up and out
of the ensuing maelstrom a furious restatement of the tarantella rhythm by
the full orchestra brings the movement to on abrupt close. The third movement
is 'a nocturne ('Notturno lagunare') inspired by a
trip at night across the Venetian lagoon with the full moon shining on the
calm black water and the island of San Francesco del Deserto calling to mind
Bocklin 's painting 'The Isle of the Dead". The sombre quality of
the music is achieved by featuring instruments of the lower register; and
the middle section contains a poignant duet for cor anglais and the rarely
used baritone oboe over rippling arpeggios on bass clarinet, the simplicity
and austerity of which bears a resemblance to Liszt's late piano piece 'La
Lugubre Gondola' no.1.

The Third Symphony was premiered at the 1960 Edinburgh Festival, again under
the direction of John Pritchard. Searle himself conducted the first performance
of the Fourth with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra two years later.
The latter explores a path of extreme economy of thematic material and sparseness
of texture, experimentation that would bear fruit in the tightly controlled
but warmly expressive works of the composer's maturity: the Fifth Symphony,
the opera Hamlet, Oxus, Labyrinth and Kubla Khan.

Fiona, Humphrey's second wife, remembers a visit they made to friends at
Gordon's Bay, South Africa, in 1964. Sitting in the garden amidst the beautiful
landscape overlooking the Indian Ocean, the composer appeared to go into
a trance-like state for several minutes; as the party moved indoors for lunch,
Searle quietly said to his wife, 'I've got the Fifth Symphany!'. The
work is dedicated to the memory afWebern: 'possibly
the beauty of the mountains encircling the bay had led me to think of him'
writes Searle, 'for he hod been a great nature-lover
and had lived and walked among the mountains of Austria in his youth '.
It would be wrong however to look for the influence of Webern in this symphony;
passing references, in homage of Searle's teacher, there certainly are, but
this is an assured work by a composer who had assimilated several diverse
influences and forged a musical language unmistakably his own.

The symphony, which was composed at white hot speed and premiered by Lawrence
Leonard and the Hallé in October 1964, plays continuously and its
five sections form an arch: introduction (andante); allegro 1; moderato;
allegro 2 and coda (adagio). As the ethereal music of the opening slowly
unfolds and moves down through the orchestra, the lines become more agitated
and the harmony mare dissonant, until the first allegro section breaks in
with a low C on the tuba and a march-like dotted rhythmic motive on the lower
strings. This material soon gives way to a more delicate, filigree music
for solo woodwinds, harp, celesta and solo strings, and these two contrasting
elements alternate as a rondo: A B A B A (the repetition of B has a fuller
scoring and a running moto perpetua acompaniment). Mirroring the gradual
shift of register in the opening section, the allegro ends with a sustained
high D on piccolo and violins with tremolandi on piano and glockenspiel,
the latter softly continuing the tremolando alone as a transition into the
central moderato. This might be regarded as the 'biographical' section of
the symphony, with clear hints of Webern's early free atonal style (the use
of repeated-note ostinati and tiny melodic fragments), pre-war Vienna (the
shadow of a Viennese waltz) and the composer's tragic accidental death at
the hands of an American liberating soldier at the end of the war (military
drum). The dream-like quality of this music is interrupted by a new idea
in the strings, marking the beginning of the second allegro, which will act
as a binding element in what is essentially an extended development of material
from section two. Mid-way through is an 'up tempo' jazz variation of the
A music from allegro 1 which is distinctly un-Webernian! After a shattering
climax the coda returns to the still character of the introduction, but this
time the process is reversed - beginning low with bassoons, bass clarinet
and cor anglais, and ending high on upper strings and woodwind- bringing
to a close one of the most significant and exciting symphonic cycles of the
post-war era.